After Wisconsin Exit Polls, White House Must Wonder If All the Polling is Wrong

Jun 6, 2012

RUSH: You know what they’re asking themselves in the White House today? They’re probably asking themselves a lot of things, and they’re probably lying to themselves about a lot of things. I think the question that they’re asking themselves today, something along the lines of, “What if all of the polling we have is wrong?”

Greetings, my friends, great to have you back. Here we are, Rush Limbaugh, the EIB Network, Limbaugh Institute for Advanced Conservative Studies. Great to be with you. Here’s the telephone number: 800-282-2882. E-mail address, ElRushbo@eibnet.com.

Like many powerful, influential members of the media, I, your host, had access to the early and intermediate exit polls. I did. There was an election yesterday in Wisconsin. By the way, you really have to love some of the headlines and some of the leads in the stories about the Walker victory. How about this from the Washington Post: “Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker Survives Recall Election.” Survives? I saw that all night last night. “Survives”? That implies barely. That implies by a gnat’s eyelash. Survives? This was a thumping! It was a bigger margin than it was two years ago.

“Scott Walker Survives Recall Election. Long lines and close vote. Race tests both parties, November strategies.” Not one thing in that headline or lede in the Washington Post is accurate, not one thing. New York Times: “Governor Wins Wisconsin in Recall Drive, Setback for Democrats.” Really? You think that might be true? New York Post put it best: “Wisconsin Voters Reject Unions in Recall Vote.” The big news of the day is that Big Labor bosses can no longer bully the taxpayers of America. Everybody’s talking today about what they think the lessons are and we can engage in that as well. And we’ll get there at some point. The bottom line is, I’m not surprised. And if you listen to this program regularly, you shouldn’t be surprised. I’m not saying there weren’t periods of apprehension and so forth, but I’m not surprised at this.

I think if Obama had been on the ballot he would lose by an even larger margin, which takes me back to this whole thing of polls. Last night on television, the cable networks were reduced to saying that it was a big win for Obama yesterday. Do you know how it was a big win for Obama? The very exit polls that were wrong about the Walker recall race, those exit polls say that voters in Wisconsin, had their presidential election been yesterday, would have voted for Obama in a nine-point margin. So the exit polls, which were known at the time to be useless, they were worthless, they were wrong, the same exit polls were highlighted and were pointed to by liberal Democrats on cable news channels saying, “The happiest guy in town tonight’s Obama.” They were actually saying that on some networks. “Big winner tonight, Obama.”

For Obama to be a big winner last night, what has to happen? He has to not care about Barrett. He didn’t. He has to not care about Wisconsin. He didn’t. He has to not care about unions. He didn’t. In order for Obama to be a big winner last night, I mean, folks, these people are nowhere near grounded in reality. They haven’t been for a long time. But all of these polls — we talked about it yesterday — that show Obama’s personal likability sky-high, I don’t believe that. His approval numbers are way below 50%. That’s probably true, but I do not believe that in the White House today they’re confident and breathing easy at all, because they have to be asking themselves, what if all the polling data we have is wrong?

It’s not just the Wilder Effect, either. It’s not just that people responding to pollsters don’t want to tell the truth when asked about an election when one of the candidates is black. It’s not just that. I think there’s some people purposely toying with pollsters now. I think there are some sophisticated voters who are purposely telling pollsters things that are not true to screw them up. I think it’s an Operation Chaos kinda thing. I think enough sophisticated voters are sick and tired. You turn on the television last night, you know the polls close at nine eastern, so what do you do? You turn on Fox, you turn on any cable network, and what do you see? “Race too close to call.”

Now, I’m gonna let something out of the bag here. I probably shouldn’t do this. But I had the exit polling data. I had it starting at four o’clock in the afternoon. The exit poll data that I had showed Walker would win by five and then it tightened. The last wave of exit poll data I got showed it 50-50. I also had internal data from one of the news networks. At four o’clock in the afternoon they were predicting when that night they would make the call. And they said it’s gonna be close to ten o’clock when we call the race. Four o’clock in the afternoon. Gonna be ten o’clock. So I watch at nine o’clock and I’ve got the internal stuff and I look at what’s on the screen, and I said, “This is all BS. It isn’t close. It’s not 50-50. The exit polls are wrong, and they’re gonna call this at ten o’clock.” It’s exactly what happened.

Part of this is, you know, creating tension and unpredictability for the viewer and getting the viewer to hang on, but the bottom line is that the exit polls, when they open at nine o’clock — and every cable channel did it; it’s not just focused on one — every one of them opened at nine o’clock, “Race too close to call.” It wasn’t, folks. It was never too close to call in reality. The exit polls made it look like it was too close to call. The exit polls at one stage did have it 50-50, and that’s when the left-wing media was all excited about it. Here, let’s go audio sound bite number one. This is Wolf Blitzer on Piers Morgan Tonight during special coverage. This is at nine o’clock on CNN, Wolf Blitzer joyous.

BLITZER: (joyous) We begin with breaking news out of Wisconsin right now where polls have just closed in a recall vote that could preview November’s election. Look at this. Our exit polls show it’s a 50-50 race as of this minute.

RUSH: Now, why was Wolf Blitzer excited? Why was 50-50 exciting to Wolf Blitzer and anybody on the left? It was because all the preelection polls had Walker winning by anywhere from three to ten. The average victory, if you wanted to do this in the polls, probably had Walker up by five or six points. So they’ve got their exit polls, and they’ve had ’em since four or five o’clock in the afternoon, they can’t say, they can’t allude to anything by law prior to nine o’clock. When nine o’clock hits, the polls close, it’s “Katie, bar the door.” Wolf is excited, 50-50. Man, this is close, it could be they’re gonna have an upset here and Barrett’s gonna win. And then let’s go to ten o’clock. And I told you, I had the internals where the networks were expecting to call this at ten o’clock. Hey, look, I’m a powerful, influential member of the media. I have access to this stuff.

Here’s Wolf Blitzer at ten o’clock, one hour after being joyous at nine o’clock.

BLITZER 10PM: (dejected) We have the breaking news. Uh, CNN can now project a winner in the Wisconsin, uh, gubernatorial contest. The incumbent Republican, Scott Walker, will retain his job as the governor of Wisconsin. The Democratic challenger, Tom Barrett, will not be the next governor of Wisconsin. Once again, he loses to Scott Walker.

RUSH: Can we play those again back-to-back? I don’t want to have me in between, Ed. You go bam, bam; one to two; nine o’clock, then ten o’clock.

BLITZER 9PM: (joyous) We begin with breaking news out of Wisconsin right now where polls have just closed in a recall vote that could preview November’s election! Look at this! (shouts) Our exit polls show it’s a 50-50 race as of this minute!

BLITZER 10PM: (dejected) We have the breaking news. Uh, CNN can now project a winner in the Wisconsin, uh, gubernatorial contest. The incumbent Republican, Scott Walker, will retain his job as the governor of Wisconsin.

RUSH: Damn it!

BLITZER 10PM: The Democratic challenger, Tom Barrett, will not be the next governor of Wisconsin.

RUSH: Awwwwwwww!

BLITZER 10PM: Once again, he loses to Scott Walker.

RUSH: And notice how Blitzer stopped talking at that point about how the Wisconsin vote would be “a preview of November.” Once Walker won, once they called it for Walker, then this race didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean a thing! At nine o’clock, when they believed their own exit polls, it was nirvana. And I guarantee you, throughout the Democrat Party — coast to coast — they are looking at all the polling data they’ve got and they’re wondering: Is any of it right?

All the polling data they have that shows Obama with whatever number of electoral votes now based on polling, all the polling data they have that shows Obama’s personal likability (which is pretty high in these polls), they’re looking at it and they’re wondering if they can trust any of it. And the odds are, if they’re smart, they’re going to tell themselves they can’t. How many elections is this now where the exit polling has been nowhere near the reality?

The first real glaring instance of it was 2004, when they had John Kerry inaugurated at five o’clock in the afternoon. Bob Shrum went to John Kerry and said, “Let me be the first to call you ‘Mr. President.'” And then the real vote started being counted. The same thing happened last night. Then the real votes start being counted, the exit polls are shown to be nowhere near reality, and Democrat voters start thinking that there’s fraud in the real vote! Now, I think what’s going on in exit polls is simple.

I actually think that Republican voters probably don’t participate as much. The Democrats wanted an investigation in 2004. They didn’t know of what. They didn’t know whether to investigate the real vote or the exit polls, but they were discombobulated. It’s the same thing here. Now, putting partisan politics aside (which is impossible to do, but just for the moment we want to do it), shouldn’t all of us be celebrating this victory? Because in reality — strip away all the partisanship, strip away all of the reasons that there is acrimony.

Doesn’t this victory last night by Scott Walker mean that states all over the country now have another choice when it comes to dealing with fiscal emergencies? They don’t have to raise taxes. States do not have to lay off people. They don’t have to go bankrupt. The federal taxpayer does not have to bail out these states. There’s now another choice. The states can trim a little fat from their public sector union contracts, which is always their biggest expense. Isn’t that good news?

There is way here that’s been lighted. This ought to be joy. In the real world, where we’re in fiscal trouble — serious fiscal trouble — here is a state which has shown a way out of it. I know. I’m whistling Dixie here because, as I said yesterday, the left doesn’t care about that. They don’t care about fiscal responsibility or sanity. They don’t care about balanced budgets. They don’t care about any of that. It’s why there’s no compromise with them.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: We have a montage for you here of CNN and ABC journalists, all excited here about the exit polling.

KING: In the exit polls tonight the voters say they are inclined if the election were today, President Obama would have won by a decent margin.

O’BRIEN: Exit polls show those very same people who let Governor Walker keep his job in exit polling said, “I’m going to support President Obama.”

NELSON: Good news for Obama in the numbers. Exit polls show that voters still favor him 53 to 47.

SULLIVAN: Even though Walker won by seven points against Barrett last night, voters polled said that they largely favored President Obama.

TRIPPI: This exit poll shows that Obama leads Romney in the state. The same people who voted today said they’d vote for Obama by nine points. So that’s pretty significant.

RUSH: That last guy, Joe Trippi, who knows better. You know, a lot of people, though, fell for this. The exit polls had it wrong. The exit polls had this 50-50. The exit polls said that the networks couldn’t call the race until the real votes were counted ’cause it was too close. So the exit poll, which was off by seven points, Walker’s victory margin, that same exit poll is cited by these wizards of smart, as showing Obama would win by nine over Romney. Wait a minute. How can you do that? The exit poll was full of it. The exit poll was worthless. “Well, yeah, but see, where it says there that Obama would win by nine, that’s what we want to happen. So we’re gonna believe that, and we’re gonna report that.”

“But none of the exit poll information ended up being right.”

“Doesn’t matter. We like that. We’re gonna report that. Obama wins by nine if the presidential race was today.”

“Really, you believe that? You believe in a state where Scott Walker wins by seven, an exit poll situation shows the race tied, but Obama wins by nine?”

“Yeah, yeah, that’s what we’re gonna believe ’cause we want to believe it, and that’s what the exit poll says.”

“Well, what about the rest of the exit poll that was wrong? Well, we want to believe that, so that’s what it’s gonna be.” Modern American journalism.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: Bedford, Indiana. Hi, Mary. I’m glad you waited. Great to have you on the program.

CALLER: Hi.

RUSH: Hi.

CALLER: Hello. Yeah, I was gonna talk to you. The very first part of the show I heard you talking about the exit polls and how they could be so wrong. And my husband’s a union member and I can tell you that a union member probably won’t be truthful to a pollster if they’re… A lot of them who will vote Republican will not say that. They’ll say they would support Obama.

RUSH: Oh, a union person who votes Republican won’t be honest with the pollster, you’re saying?

CALLER: Well, you know, that’s my opinion. But this has happened to me where I’ve been called, and mainly by the local, and they’ll say, you know, actually in the last election, and they would say, “You know, are you going to the polls? We want to make sure everybody gets to the polls. Will you vote for Obama?” And I’m like, “Yeah.”

RUSH: Let me tell you something.

CALLER: You’re not going to say “no” because —

RUSH: I totally understand this, totally understand. You know why I understand it? I’ll tell you why I understand it. Because I know that everybody is obsessed with what other people think of them. So, you’re walking out of the polling place, you’re in Wisconsin, the news media is filled with the fact that unions are God’s gift to everything and that Satan is Scott Walker and the Republicans. So you walk out, and there’s an exit pollster who wants to know how you voted. The safest thing to do is to tell ’em you voted for the Democrats. Then the pollster will love you and not get mad at you and won’t yell at you and maybe won’t follow you home and maybe won’t poison your water. That’s what people think.

By the same token, if somebody calls you, even if it’s a robo-call polling you at home on presidential preference and one of the candidates is President Obama, “Oh, gosh, I’m voting the black guy. I don’t care what his name is. Write it down in all caps, I’m voting the black guy.” Then you hang up, turn to your wife, “You think we’re okay? Think we’re safe?” I have no doubt that this happens. People want and like their kneecaps. They want to hold onto ’em. So if you are a union guy in Wisconsin, you walk out and you’ve just voted for Walker and here’s some exit pollster, and you know he works for a network, “Do you mind telling us how you voted?”

“Not at all. What do you want to know?”

“Who did you vote for?”

“I voted for Tom Barrett.”

“All right.” Pollster writes it down. You lie about everything, you go home and you’re safe. And in the process you confound ’em. I have no doubt that that’s happening. This is why the unions want card check. They don’t like secret ballots. Secret ballots, the union, who knows how much strength that they would lose. Just go to Twitter, look at all the death threats that Scott Walker’s getting. If you think Walker’s getting death threats, you think, well, maybe you’d be a target, too, if you admitted you voted for him to a pollster. And you also think, “My gosh, they know who I am. Even though they say they don’t want my name, they know who I am. They can find out who I am.” Mary, thanks. I appreciate it.